Upcoming 'Hearthstone' Smartphone Version Will Support Cross-Platform Play With PC, Mac, iPad and Android Tablets

"Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft" is fast proving to be the veritable ace of spades in developer-cum-publisher Blizzard Entertainment's repertoire. The digital take on the highly addictive collectible cards game business has proven to be extremely successful after an initial release on Windows, Mac and iPad as well as Android tablets. The game has already crossed a whopping 25 million registered accounts as of January 2015.

It's only logical for Blizzard to bring this fan favourite to even more platforms. It's hard to think of a better way than to make the already portable tablet version even handier by porting the game to smartphones. Eurogamer reports that's exactly what Blizzard has planned. To make the experience even more seamless, "Hearthstone" will now allow cross-play between all versions. This includes the PC and Mac as well as iPad and Android tablet versions, in addition to the upcoming iPhone and Android smartphone editions.

Speaking in an interview with Gamespot, the chief designer of the digital collectible card game Eric Dodds revealed that the experience will be uniform irrespective of the platform choosen to play the game. In fact, he was confident enough to announce that there won't be any discernible means of telling whether the opponent is on PC, tablet or smartphone during an online match. "Hearthstone" is supposed to deliver a consistent experience within the ecosystem irrespective of whether the game is being played on mobile or desktop platform.

However, there was one aspect of the game that Dodds didn't seem as confident about. The tablet versions of the game were notorious for draining fully charged iPad and Android devices down to naught in alarmingly short times. It must be noted that larger tablets have significantly greater battery life as compared to smartphones.

It is unsure how smartphones, with their limited battery backup, will be able to cope with the aggressive power draw of the game. Dodds acknowledged the power hungry nature of the game and attributed that to its high-quality graphics. He mentioned that the team is focusing on optimising smartphone battery usage at the moment.

"Hearthstone is certainly... it's a beautiful game, so it definitely uses power," said Dodds while justifying the significant power draw of the game. "One thing we're constantly thinking about is how to make the most of the phone's battery."

The problems arising due to the "always online" nature of "Heathstone" weren't apparent on the tablet and PC versions of the game, as both platforms don't generally use expensive mobile data connectivity. The portability of smartphones also means that more and more gamers will be playing it on the move through a mobile internet connection. The ensuing data charges could burn a hole into their monthly data limits and potentially cause them to incur expensive download charges.

Dodds claimed ignorance on the actual bandwidth overhead posed by the game during an average session, but he still acknowledged that the constant need for connectivity could strain gamers' mobile data plans. He simply advised against playing the game while on the move through a mobile connection.

To be honest, that defeats the very purpose of having the game on a smartphone to begin with. Unfortunately, the price of a portable "Hearthstone" experience could potentially come at heavy mobile download charges. There's no way to tell for sure, apart from waiting for the smartphone version to hit Apple and Android app stores sometime later this year.

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WTF Is... - Hearthstone? (credit: TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit YouTube channel)